I came across this piece by a Zen teacher in the Tricycle magazine, a Buddhist publication, and I have not seen a more penetrating and accurate description of true joy than this. So I wanted to share it with you! Blessings, Robert Cornell

I sit here,

Dappled by the sun filtering

through the leaves, a child chases a pigeon,

the old man naps there on the bench,

a white moth flits by,

occasions of joy,

always right here.

Say the word joy, and what comes to mind? To me, joy seems to come unbidden, just erupting at the oddest times. It isn’t possible to plan for joy, yet when it comes, it is an unmistakable overflowing of feelings of delight in the world and its mysteries.

I remember the morning that my dear friend Robert died, after a long night of struggle. It was one of those bright, early September mornings when the sun rises at just the angle that portends the waning of summer light. The nurses left me in the room for several hours, and I sat with his body. I chanted, I thought of our times together, I said good-bye, and then it was time to leave. When I stepped out on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 77th Street, just a few feet away was a flower stand bursting with the season’s colors. I stood transfixed, staring at the beauty of chrysanthemums, asters, dahlias, and zinnias. The sounds of morning traffic, the people moving down the street, the flowers, the sun, and the sky all seemed to be a joyous celebration of life itself, now seeming so precious after witnessing my friend’s long night of letting go.

Yes, that joyful feeling was oddly present. It was as if a vibrant, fresh energy possessed me, like a brilliant dye coloring my whole being—the joy of life all around me. The intensity of his death, the long night of witness, and the early morning of saying good-bye all worked together to encourage a readiness to experience joy. Does that sound strange? It felt strange. After a moment or so, I was stunned at the feeling I was having. And I was grateful. Suddenly I was experiencing the vitality and immediacy of life itself—in the flowers, the people, the clamor of traffic—without the walls of resistance that human beings are heir to.

What is this resistance? Why do we again and again resist our feelings of joy or happiness or love? We don’t do it intentionally, but our conditioning, our habits of mind, and our culture all seem to work to build up the walls between what we naturally feel and what we allow ourselves to feel. Ironically, it is often the times when we are forced to feel intensely—times of grief, sorrow, or physical pain—that catapult us into feeling joy. That is why we often hear people say they are grateful for the losses or difficulties they have encountered. They are grateful because the shock forced them into an intimacy with life that had been hidden from them. Intimacy seems hidden, but it is actually available to us all the time: in the world we inhabit with people, in the natural world, in our work, and in all our relationships. Once we are willing to be directly intimate with our life as it arises, joy emerges out of the simplest of life experiences. Something happens—a mourning dove coos, the eyes of another person meet ours, a cat stretches, we notice the sensation of breeze on our cheek—and at once we are intimate with our life. It can be so subtle. You’re hurrying along the street, and suddenly you notice a drop of dew on a leaf. You stop and allow that surging feeling in your chest to just well up. The moment passes, and you are back in the diffused attention of the street you’re walking in: the people going by, the errand you are on, the way the day is settling on you. Yet this quality of joy hangs around the edges, allowing you to open yourself to being awake and new with each experience you encounter. Joy wells up when we leave room in our consciousness for it to come.

Joy can come as a surprise, when we least expect it. I recall sitting in a dark, airless, funky “multipurpose space” we called the meditation room at an HIV/AIDS health facility in New York City. This was before the arrival of lifesaving medication, and the center was very busy. Twice a week, I would ride my bike across town, walk into the dingy room, stack the chairs, vacuum the floor with our portable vacuum, unlock the cabinet, put out twenty meditation cushions, and wait for anyone who might come in. There were a few regulars who came to each meeting, and there were drop-ins, often those who were waiting for the acupuncture clinic next door. We would sit in meditation, talk about it a little, and then it would be time for me to repack the cushions, reset the chairs, and leave the room. It’s hard to explain, because there was a grimness to the scene, yet somehow joy always arose in that little room with those who joined me there. Sickness and addiction were all around us, but the joy of connection, of being able to offer what little I could and in turn receiving the warmth and humanness of others, made those days of service uplifting and alive. No matter how tired and irritable I may have felt going in, I always seemed to leave with a flutter of energy in my chest: simple joy. Such a gift coming from a modest act of service to others! No matter how small or large our effort may be, the activity of giving and receiving in relationship generates a field of joy when it is not encumbered by our grasping for ego gratification.

In the midst of our work, whatever it is, to recognize our joy is a wondrously beneficial experience. Although the intense feeling may fade, the sense of internal gratitude and respect stays with us. This is especially true when we are working in a group for some mutual goal. When we gather to clean a park, make food, or write a document together, there can be a quality of joy within the whole group, a kind of dropping of our usual preoccupied selves—the selves that want to be gratified in one way or another or to avoid pain—and instead, there is the joy in the efforts we offer together.

What is this intimacy, this joy, this being so close to what is in the moment that we are filled with awe? When we think of joy, we think of a buoyant, upward-moving feeling of delight, pleasure, and appreciation. We may associate joy with happy things, with falling in love, or with getting what we want. But actually there is a deeper, more resonant, soulful feeling: the joy of life no matter what the circumstances.

How is joy like falling in love? They seem similar yet slightly different. When we fall in love with a person or an idea or a project, there is also that upward sensation, that flow of energy that feels really good, almost magical, but the difference can be a subtle one. Falling in love or achieving great success is euphoric, an intensely felt elation that is dependent on the relative success of our attachment to the object of our love. True joy, with its sense of wonder and reverence, comes of itself and neither depends on nor arises out of our personal ego attachments, our projections, or our needs. True joy comes of itself, rather like the ancient Taoist notion of tzu-jan—that which naturally emerges from what is present in this moment, this situation. Often this is the simplest of moments: a surprising joy that lifts you up when you feel a cool breeze on a crowded city street; a flash of inspiration as you glimpse the moon behind the clouds, a drop of water on a leaf, a toddler laughing. It is just what is actually coming up in this moment if we are free enough to notice it.

We can’t control joy. It is something that bobs up when we are truly alive and meet the whole world in an instant. We can experience joy in every aspect of our life, in working, in caring, in creating, and even in suffering. I think the key to experiencing joy is, as we say so often, being awake. What is “being awake”? Isn’t it our capability to let go of our grasping onto what we think we want, what we think is happening to us, to drop all of those presumptions and be exposed and intimate with what is here, right now? I believe it is our resistance to what is right here, right now, that blocks the natural flow of joy.

You could even say that it is the search for joy that brings us to practice meditation. We may call it something else: freedom from our fear, our anxiety, our obsessions, our sadness, or our grasping (greed). Yet, if we go a little deeper, we may find that the key to our liberation from our fears is getting really close to ourselves, finding our own being deep within: the one who is not afraid, anxious, or grasping; the one who is simply here now; the one who spontaneously experiences joy in the ordinary stream of life. How do we get in touch with that deepest, clearest, most intimate self? Isn’t it through the practice of stopping, breathing, bringing our heart-mind back to this breath, this reality, whatever it may be?

In that practice of intimate meditation, we enter what the ancients called the “gate of ease and joy.” This phrase, from an early Chinese meditation manual, evokes the ease that Shakyamuni felt as he settled onto a cushion made of kusha grass offered by the milkmaid who gave him the sustenance after his many years of struggle, intentional hunger, and self-denial. The offering of something of ease helped to turn him toward a “middle way” between asceticism and excess. Such is the ease evoked in the phrase “gate of ease and joy”: an ease that gently smoothes the sharp pangs of life that invade our mind and leaves a space within us for joy. The joy in the phrase is like the joy evoked in the LotusSutra, where the Buddha says that those who respond to the teachings with joy will go forth in various places among various people, who will themselves respond with joy and go forth and in this way share joy throughout the world. The infectious quality of joy is like when a baby laughs or an old person smiles; we don’t know why we experience joy, but we do, because it is joy arising.

What is it that opens the gate to joy in our ordinary, day-to-day lives? I’ve been calling it awakeness and awareness: the simple practice of sitting quietly, breathing in and out, dropping our obsessive thoughts and resistance to the freshness of the moment that is exactly here. It is amazing, our resistance to tapping into the joy that is like the blue sky surrounding this earth. Joy is always here if we can just for a few moments stop our constant ruminating and grasping for what is not here. Breathing in, we drop our preoccupations and thoughts, and we simply breathe in, enjoying that in-breath. Breathing out, we again simply enjoy that out-breath. In this way, we experience things as they are. Appreciation and gratitude suffuse our whole being, and joy arises.

Maybe it doesn’t always feel exactly like that. When we hang onto our stories and ideas about ourselves, it doesn’t feel joyful; it feels tiresome. We say, “Oh no, that thought again, that desire, that frustration.” But if we take a breath and calmly, without any self-recrimination, see the distraction and let it go, we are back in the reality of this moment. We are at once aware of what we were thinking and of the present moment.

This dual awareness, a split-second really, helps us to recognize the truth and vitality of being awake to this moment. And as we clear away this old debris, a deeper truth emerges. It is like the story of the Chinese Zen Master Dongshan, who was asked, “Is there joy in your practice?” He replied, “It is not without joy. It’s like sweeping shit into a pile and then picking up a precious jewel from within it.”

Of course there’s shit; shit is part of life. It is what is left over from our actions, smelling of all the aspects of life. If there weren’t shit, we wouldn’t appreciate the jewel. An old Buddhist theme is that in the mythical “heavenly realm” where everything is perfect, true liberation is not possible. I would add that true joy is not possible in a world without suffering. The suffering (the shit) enriches us, gives us wisdom and compassion. The jewel is this joy of life itself.

When we are willing to be intimate with what actually is here now, to look directly at all of our experience, we might recognize that this is our life, however different from our thoughts and ideas about it. It is as if we hunker down and actually get very real, recognizing that our thoughts of gaining and losing, good and bad, happy and sad, are what distance us from ourselves. When we breathe in fully and pause, we clear a space in our mind without judgment. If we are willing to hang in with the practice over and over again, noticing how our thoughts of gaining or losing distance us from ourselves and from what is, we open ourselves to a whole new reality. We enter into intimacy with everything; we enter a world of joy that is so close, so pervasive, that we are surprised we haven’t been aware of its presence all along.

Once Dongshan was asked, “What is the deepest truth? What is the wisdom that liberates?” His response was, “I am always close to this.” It is the closeness itself—the intimacy with what is here with us now—that is the truth that liberates us. Imagine being so close to your experience of life! This is true joy. To be so close to your experience of life, so intimate with your world, that you are filled with awe. You are like a child lying in the grass, staring up at the vast starry night. —Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara

In spiritual work there is a very real potential for our Super Ego to stealthily insert itself into our practice. The Super Ego often shows up as an Inner Critic, a Bully, a Pusher, a Perfectionist who remonstrates with us for failing to live up to our spiritual truths and ideals and pushes us to do better. Because we have spiritual aspirations, it is very tempting for us to listen to our Super Egos, conflating their toxic attacks on our well being with spiritual truths. Our Super Egos can be very creative at turning every new insight and teaching against us as they use them as grounds for new criticisms against us. Our Super Ego are incredibly skilled at cloaking their demands and attacks under what seem to be incontrovertible spiritual truths. They often rely on the general theme that our Egos are inherently bad and so we have to beat them out of ourselves. But the real impact of our Inner Critics is to keep us enslaved in internalized self judgment and self abuse and cut off from the true power of Love and Joy. This is very common in spiritual circles where psychological insight is not honored and the toxic effects of childhood abuse are not taken seriously.

In my therapy practice it is quite common for me to see a client initially suffering under a heavy weight of guilt, shame, anxiety and depression created by an Inner Critic that hides in the guise of “spiritual truth”. When this Inner Bully is exposed for the false prophet that it is, they begin to come out from under the weighty blanket of shame, a sense of deficiency and badness and to come alive, perhaps for the first time in their lives. The sad irony is that they have suffered under a false spirituality that taught them to doubt and hate their natural inclinations. So often the body takes a hard rap in spiritual traditions when in fact it is the mind that leads us astray with its belief in inherent sinfulness and depravity!

I recently had a client that realized that his so called “Maximizer” who promised to make his life meaningful was in fact a toxic impostor that kept him running on an endless treadmill of self improvement and self castigation when he did not “live up to his potential”. He had bought into the belief that, without this Inner Critic, he would never amount to much. In our culture that worships success this is a very real temptation, even for people with spiritual orientations. The success culture insidiously undermines spiritual aspiration and turns it into a toxic parody of itself where it becomes spiritual ambition. As he saw the Maximer for what it was and released it, his anxiety and depression lifted and he found a quiet joy and he began to trust that his life would unfold and flow organically forward to where he was intended to go without constant anxious self monitoring and self criticism.

QUESTION FOR SELF REFLECTION:

Where in your spiritual ideals and attitudes might an Inner Critic be hiding out?

Often this Inner Critic is so hidden from us that, initially, we cannot see it for what it is. One good indication that we are operating under its toxic influence is if there is any anxiety or depression present in our spiritual practice. If there is, most likely an Inner Critic is operating

Many of us have got a strong Inner Control Freak (ICF). Its job, as it sees it, is to monitor our emotions and to make sure they stay in acceptable bounds – not too high not too low. And there are some emotions that they find unacceptable, such as sadness, fear, anger, etc. Vulnerability of course is a complete no no! That is just to too delicate, too uncontrollable…and too alive!! Then their job is to manage our emotions in whatever way they can, be it addictive processes or compulsive processes. These could be drugs, alcohol, food, workaholism, co-dependency, people pleasing – anything that will lower its anxiety about keeping our emotions in check.

The way that we work with our Inner Control Freaks is very straightforward; it’s just not always easy for us to tolerate. We let ourselves feel what we are feeling. Of course, the ICF is going to freak out about this, hence its name, Inner Control Freak. And we have to let it have its freak out and remember that this is not the truth of who we really are. The ICF will try to compel us to do whatever it takes to run away from our inner experience, to addictive or compulsive activities of one kind or another. And we refrain. Again and again we refrain. We let ourselves just be. And let God or our Higher Self handle our feelings.

And Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 18:3 NIV

Our ego defenses are incredibly strong. After all, they have been with us our whole lives to protect us from further hurt and harm. So they do not relent easily or quickly in allowing us to make contact with the tender vulnerability hiding below them. When we do make contact with this tenderness, it is not unusual for our defenses to freak out and try to shut the contact down as they have our whole life.

How our individual defenses react may look very different. Some of us will get aggressive and attack back. Or we may go to our friends and complain about how we have been done wrong. Or we may try to placate or manipulate. Or we may shut down or attack ourselves as being unworthy. In any event, what our defenses are trying to do is to keep us from feeling what they believe we can’t possible survive feeling.

Our work as spiritual beings is to learn to return again and again to the genuine tenderness that lies under our defenses. We do this with great self compassion and patience and persistence. Gradually over time we become more real, without artifice. We regain the openness and spontaneity we had as children, which is what Jesus is inviting us in this sermon to live into. It is not easy work but it is well worth it!

One style of meditation could be described as resting in the seat of the Heart. This often starts as a devotional prayer that focuses on God, Jesus. Mother Mary, or other religious figures. It may start with words or images but eventually it empties of words and images and becomes a living presence, a dwelling in silence in the heart. In this practice, when our attention leaves the heart and gets involved with other things we gently brings it back down into the heart space again and again.

One challenge for this practice, in addition to the wandering mind, is when the heart space feels tight or cramped. This can be painful to experience, and yet we gently persist, perhaps putting our hand over our heart space to bring attention and comfort to the heart. Often what we are experiencing in these moments is one of our old wounds and so it take compassion and persistence to stay with the hurt. Gradually as we stay present, the Beloved will enter in and heal the wound. We don’t need to psychoanalyze it or try to fix it ourselves.

And sometimes as we bear with it, the gift of tears will manifest and we feel the Beloved’s presence in the heart of hearts. This can be a time of poignant sweetness where our sense of unworthiness, alienation and loneliness melt away and we stand in the presence of the Beloved. This happens in God’s time, not ours. It is ultimately a surrender into the arms of the Beloved.

In all the great spiritual traditions, community is valued highly. Why is this? Probably because the process of transformation from ego consciousness into Christ consciousness is so very, very challenging. So we need others for support and accountability on this long, rich and difficult journey to the Beloved. In the Buddhist tradition there are three treasures: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Buddha is enlightened mind. Dharma are the teachings that lead us to enlightened mind. And Sangha is the community of practitioners who support each other and practice together. Jesus said in one of this teachings, “wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, I am with you.” Christianity is all about community – communion.

My wife will be with you tonight to lead the group. I will be on a Diamond Approach retreat and will be thinking of you tonight. We will be in our new home at the top of the stairs in what is called the Junior High Room. The sofas there are very comfy so come and sink into the Presence of the Beloved with us. Please come and be with community!

When we bring our egoic consciousness to meditation we have a set up for a basic frustration. Egoic consciousness wants to have a goal so it can “do” something so that it can achieve something. It says essentially, “Give me something to do (meditation) so that I can then reach this great goal of enlightenment. Then when I reach this goal, I will be free of suffering and I can be happy.”

Already there lies the problem, for egoic consciousness has set up a goal that it is striving to attain. It is then alienated from BEING. BEING just IS. It does not do. It just is. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:….sound familiar???

So we just sit and breathe and think and plan and struggle until we get tired of all of the trying and doing and we just gradually settle into being. Just breathing. Just …being. No goal to reach. No place to get to ….just right…here. No place else to go. No past no future. No goal to attain. So simple. So obvious that it isn’t obvious, at least to our poor goal oriented ego!

Sometimes, because of a very difficult thing happening in our lives, our hearts seem to turn to stone: adamantine, cold, unfeeling. The emotions that are coming up for us feel too intense, too painful for us to let them surface. Our ego defenses, in their desperate attempts to protect us, harden our hearts. Then we feel like a rock: unbreakable but frozen and numb. The way forward to healing is to soften our hearts with deep compassion for ourselves. You might gently and lovingly put a hand over your heart space and talk to your heart thus: Yes I know what you are feeling is unbearable. It’s so painful. I’m here for you.

Playing soft tender music can open the floodgates of your heart to what is present for you. I heartily recommend the works of Arvo Part, Salve Regina, Spiegel im Spiegel, and Stabat Mater as particularly healing for the soft tender spot in your hurt heart. Perhaps journaling while you listen might open a conversation with your scared, shut down heart. Patience and consistent kindness are important when you are dealing with your heart that has clamped closed like an alarmed clam.

Most Christians glibly recite “Thy kingdom come,” but this means almost nothing until and unless they also say “My kingdom go.” – Fr. Richard Rohr from his daily blog.

Except for the few great teachers and masters, including Buddha and Jesus, all of us are to some degree caught up in the beliefs and behaviors that we learned in our family of origin, our culture and our peers. This kind of unconscious conditioning is inevitable and not something that we should beat ourselves up about. And it is something for us to learn to gradually slough off.

This conditioning is what Richard Rohr is calling “My Kingdom”. Each of us sees the world and ourselves through a distorted frame of reference. In the US we could say that our culture’s frame is one of individualism, materialism and a worship of success, power and influence. These are our idols that we worship. To some extent this frame distorts all that we do in this country and it is not the kingdom that Jesus invited us into.

One way of releasing ourselves from our belief systems is to begin to inquire deeply over and over again as to what we (often unconsciously) actually believe about ourselves, our values and the world around us. Instead of taking at face value what we SAY we believe we inquire into what actually motivates us. What we see ourselves doing says a lot more than what we say we believe. When, without shaming ourselves, we do this on a regular basis, the outlines of “My Kingdom” become clearer and clearer and more vulnerable to change.